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OPINION

Other views: Physician-assisted suicide laws grant dignity

Published 2:17 p.m. CT Oct. 21, 2015

Christy O'Donnell, seated, who has terminal lung cancer, discusses right to die in Sacramento.(Photo: AP)

Retired real estate agent Charles Selsberg, 77, was not what anyone would call an activist. But ravaged by Lou Gehrig’s disease in his dying days, Selsberg made a public plea to the Colorado legislature to legalize physician-assisted suicide.

“Living with this disease is a cruelty we wouldn’t tolerate for a pet,” Selsberg wrote with his daughter’s help in a commentary for The Denver Postlast year. He couldn’t eat, breathe on his own or speak above a labored whisper, but without a legal way to end his life, he was forced to live on as “really just a mind now, trapped in a dead body.”

Selsberg’s plea wasn’t answered in Colorado, where a right-to-die measure failed in committee this spring, about a year after his death. But in several other states, lawmakers are listening.

California enacted a measure this month, joining Montana, Oregon, Vermont and Washington in allowing doctors to prescribe life-ending, self-administered medication for certain terminally ill patients. A similar measure has passed the New Jersey Assembly and is awaiting action in the state Senate. Supporters are promoting “death with dignity” legislation in several other states.

Out of decency and respect for the wishes of people suffering excruciating declines, doctors should be legally allowed to assist terminally ill patients end their lives, with strict safeguards against abuse. A Gallup Poll last May found that nearly 70 percent of Americans agree.

Several individuals have demonstrated in the most public way imaginable that they want this choice. Brittany Maynard, a 29-year-old Californian with brain cancer, became the new face of the death-with-dignity movement when she moved to Oregon so she could take her own life last year. Retired Los Angeles police detective Christy O’Donnell, 47, who has lung cancer and only a few months to live, campaigned for the new California law. Because opponents are threatening to seek a 2016 ballot measure to overturn the law, which won’t take effect until at least April, O’Donnell may not live to take advantage of the law she worked so hard to pass.

Fears that such laws would lead to abuse and coercion have proved unfounded. Oregon, the first state to allow physician-assisted suicide, has paved the way with more than 15 years of experience and a properly structured law. Physician-assisted suicide is open only to people 18 or older who have been diagnosed with a terminal illness that will lead to death within six months. They must make two oral requests to their physician, at least 15 days apart, plus a written request. Two doctors must confirm their diagnosis and determine that they are capable of making their own health decisions. This is not a law that allows for impulsive decisions.

In Oregon, the number of suicides has been small — a total of 859 in 17 years. Last year, there were 105 physician-assisted suicides out of a total of 34,160 deaths in the state.

Fears that the poor or uneducated or minorities, lacking health insurance to provide proper care, would be forced into into suicide were unfounded, according to Oregon’s statistics. Since 1998, 97 percent of the individuals have been white, all but 6 percent were high-school graduates, and 46 percent had a bachelor’s degree or higher. More than 98 percent had health insurance, and 90 percent were enrolled in a hospice.

Critics make much of the fact that just one in four cited pain as their end-of-life concern. But individuals should not have to conform to someone else’s idea of what is too painful to live with in the last months of their lives. Nearly 90 percent cited losing the ability to engage in enjoyable activities; 50 percent cited losing control of bodily functions.

In the 1990s, the zealotry of Jack Kevorkian, known as “Dr. Death,” set back the cause of physician-assisted suicide. Today, the California law has 65 percent approval. Gov. Jerry Brown got it right when he wrote that he doesn’t know what he would do if he were “dying in prolonged and excruciating pain,” but that it would be a comfort “to consider the options afforded by this bill. And I wouldn’t deny that right to others.”